Perhaps I can now tie up (sew up?) this thread with this excerpt from a [Sydney, Australia] Sun-Herald column by "WORDSMYTH Terry Smyth".

"Then again, maybe it happened like this:In 1914, Laurence Binyon's reputation as a versifier was enough to get the odd poem published, but not enough to pay the rent. His day job was assistant keeper of prints anddrawings at the British Museum, where he was known as an expert in Asian art. In that capacity he had just returned from a lecture tour of America when war broke out and, while laid up with a heavy cold caught on the Atlantic crossing, was inspired to pen his immortal poem, which included the line: Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn. Too ill to take the bus into town to deliver his verse in person, he had no choice but to phone it in to The Times, carefully dictating to a copytaker who, knowing him as a stickler for exactitude, asked: "Would you like me to read it back to you, Mr Binyon?" "That won'd be necessary," sniffed the poet, desperate for a hot toddy and a lie down. "I'm sure id's absoludely word perfecd."

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